How London Zoo gave West End families a ‘penguin’s-eye view’
The Media Plan
Summer is the key period for family outings and the Zoological Society of London needed to capitalise on this crucial season to attract more visitors to London Zoo.
Rik Moore, The Kite Factory’s managing partner for strategy, told The Media Leader: “ZSL have a wonderful phrase to refer to their estate, which is ‘shared spaces of wonder’. That sense of wonder being shared between parent and child (and children of all ages, for that matter) really resonated with us.
“If we could recreate that shared sense of wonder in media, effectively exporting it from the zoo to the media spaces, we could engage the public and attract them back towards the zoo.”
Utilising ZSL’s first-party ticketing sales data, The Kite Factory was able to identify three key audiences: families living in London and surrounding areas; domestic family visitors; and overseas tourists coming to the UK — along with how they made journeys into the capital and how they spent their time.
The agency then looked at geo-data to understand where it could find these audiences and, importantly, where media intersects with them.
Through owned, earned and shared media, as well as paid digital activity, The Kite Factory was able to target these audiences ahead of their visit to the capital.
Once they were in the city, further digital and OOH activity allowed the brand to continue its conversation and to prompt them.
Stopping people in their tracks
With so many attractions in London, ZSL needed a way to stand out from the competition. Moore explained: “We needed a channel activation that would stop people in their tracks. A channel that could export the wonder of the zoo and ignite that feeling within the audience. An activation that would make them look up from their phones and be the first thing they talked about when they went back to their device.”
That was how The Kite Factory landed on Outernet London, a huge space with interactive wraparound screens on its walls and ceiling, accompanied by full sound. It is also located in the heart of the West End — a high-footfall area that would allow ZSL to reach all three of its target audience groups and signpost them towards the zoo.
Moore continued: “It has the broadcast power of outdoor, but with the added emotional pull a truly immersive experience brings. As a media experience, it truly exported and conveyed the principle of ‘shared spaces of wonder’.”
ZSL chose the Humboldt penguins’ enclosure to be the star of the massive immersive canvas, offering visitors an all-round underwater view of the animals’ London home — the first time a 360-degree video had been used in Outernet.
The overall campaign has seen good results for ZSL: prompted awareness rose by one percentage point to 87%, transactions were 10% above target and revenue was 8% above target. Moreover, cost per acquisition came in 12% below planned, while ROI increased by 11%.
For Moore, the only disappointment was that the high cost of the activation meant the campaign ran for just a fortnight.
“In an ideal world, we would have run it for longer so more people could experience it,” he conceded. “Ultimately, we sacrificed longevity and frequency to maximise the impact of the experience, and the success of the activation validates that decision.”
And the highlight? Moore concluded: “It was just wonderful to see people, whether children or adults, wandering about the Outernet, reacting to the experience with genuine joy and wonder.
“It was advertising, and it did its job, whilst managing to do it in a way that really added something to the audience’s day. That’s genuinely special to be able to do that.”